I think Emiliano Pecis from Oracle has created some good use cases for Enterprise 2.0. Having said this, getting to this point is not only a technological advancement within organisations but also an advancement in the culture and attitudes within the organisation. Change management has to be done over time and monitored carefully. A large scale enterprise wide Enterprise 2.0 implementation could/might not be as expensive as compared to a SAP or Oracle type implementation in terms of software and customisation costs. However, the change management cost will be much higher.
Many have said that the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in organisations (Enterprise 2.0) should be started bottom up and try to prove to the senior management that it’s a great tool and hopefully implement it across the organisation. What I have seen so far is that, this is seldom the case. I agree that this is good in theory but often doesn’t happen in practice. Senior management buy in is absolutely crucial.
If a Enterprise 2.0 platform started bottom up, likely it would be targeting a specific problem that department or business unit has. If proper planning and implementation concepts are used, it is likely that the tool would be fit for purpose and achieve its goals. Sad to say this will just be another tool that large corporations have in their IT software portfolio which could contain hundreds, if not, thousands of software titles. This will just be another point solution. Social networking and collaboration of Enterprise 2.0 requires the whole population to be involved, contributing and interacting on the virtual platform across teams and geographical solutions.
If a point solution approach is taken, it will not achieve the full benefit of Enterprise 2.0 and this would not only increase the transaction costs between parties in the organisation and also increase the ongoing software maintenance costs and licensing/support fees. Employees would have to interact over different point solutions to get to their objective (assuming there are multiple solutions for collaboration and knowledge sharing). In this event, the Enterprise 2.0 will become a liability to the organisation.
Bottom up approach is great – this shows that people who are executing daily chores wants to use it to help improve efficiency and productivity. However, once the senior management sees a change in attitudes, this is time for change. Conduct proper business analysis, business case, strategy and everything a good consulting company would do in a software implementation project and select the best tool for the organisation and decommission any old system that is not fit for purpose anymore.
Large companies are facing increasing compliance costs like Sarbanes-Oxley. The costs involved in running large global companies are getting astonishing and the benefits of a global company is diminishing. Leveraging global resources effectively for tasks is still not very understood and even with new web technologies, many organisations are still not implementing them very well.
How about this? Assuming that each business unit should be and must be profitable, why not have many small organisations in a partnership or work as a “franchise” type agreement? You can still leverage global resources and skills through web technologies but also keeping the cost down.
I am no expert in many areas and I am new to many aspects of business and legal stuff as well. What do you think? Am I crapping rubbish?
I hope everything that Obama said will come through. Using technology as a key enabler for this strategies and policies will ensure things can get in a more streamlined manner.
The coverage of the benefits of social networking in organisations is plentiful however, the risks are not quite well covered.
Like every other initiative in organisations, setting up social networking requires time, effort and money to the organisation. Even though the cost of setting up a social network can be very low but the cost of maintaining relationships can be quite high in particular strong ties between two parties. This may not productive and cost effective in certain situations. Research by Granovetter shows that weak ties are more effective as they provide non-redundant information and less costly to maintain.
Social networks can also be quite dysfunctional and counter-productive due to certain actors in the network or lack of social beliefs and norms within the environment where actors do not have a clear set of governance framework nor cultural norms. This is a case of low level of embeddedness in the social network.
In the opposite case where embeddedness is overly powerful, the social network would be too deeply entrenched in their norms and beliefs and this would restrict innovation and thinking out of the box. This might also create a close group where “visitors are not welcomed”.
In some social networks where a key focal actor or sub-unit within the organisation controls many relationship, the destruction or demise of such an actor or sub-unit might cause catastrophic consequences. This will have a negative psychological impact on other actors in the network vicinity.
The problem of free-riding would always be a problem in social networks, however in the organisational environment, this might be deemed as a bigger issue as employees are fighting and jostling for pay rises and promotion and free riding (if exposed by others) will cause unnecessary tensions.
Above are just some of the risks of social network and collaboration in organisations, please feel free to comment or add to this list.
Late last year, I have been invited to speak at the Inspecht HR Futures Conference. I am very honoured by this invitation. The topic that I will be discussing will be the Implementation of Enterprise 2.0 and its Value in Organisations and I am framing it around how BearingPoint has implemented our Enterprise 2.0 tools and some of the benefits we have realised so far.
Other speakers include:
Stephen Collins, Founder Acidlabs
Anne Bartlett-Bragg, Managing Director Headshift
David Talamelli, Senior Recruiter Oracle Corporation
Geoff Jennings, Director and Founder Online Recruitment
Jasmin Tragas, Managing Consultant IBM Human Capital Management
Michael Park, Senior Associate Deacons Law Firm
Riges Younan, CEO 2Vouch
Thomas Shaw, CEO Recruitment Directory
This conference will be held on the 26 February 2009 in Melbourne Australia and to sign up please visit here.
I am glad knowledge is so freely available nowadays. Easily five years back, I would not have the luxury to watch world leaders and industry experts and global CEOs speak at universities like MIT Sloan, Harvard and various conferences across the world.
Well today’s video is by John Chambers, President and CEO, Cisco Systems. Thanks Bertrand for his post on this.
One of the key points of his talk was about collaboration and web 2.0 technologies and he has clearly stated that this is the direction CISCO is taking into the future. I shall not comment or question on their ability and capability to make it happen. CISCO is an extremely large firm with great talent and I hope they can really pull this off. This is no easy task, seamless collaboration and information sharing is a huge task. I have 4 computers in my household, 1 mobile phone (which is really a mini computer) and two calendars which I have trouble trying to sync my work and personal life together. I was just wondering that at this age where I have trouble trying to get my life to “collaborate” nicely, it would be even harder to get people to collaborate easily. John (in my opinion) is right though, I do share the same vision as him – collaboration and web 2.0 is the future of the internet.
I have discussed previously about selling Enterprise 2.0 in various posts and today, I am going to give a quick update to what I have been doing.
Enterprise 2.0 is not something you can sell by itself. Its like if you sell ice-cream, you have to give a cone/cup to hold the ice-cream. Therefore Enterprise 2.0 is like the cone/cup and other systems like Enterprise Content Management, Information Management, Enterprise Search and Business Intelligence is like the ice-cream. If you are wondering why I say Enterprise 2.0 is like the cone/cup and not the ice-cream, its because, Enterprise 2.0 is not the key technology but the key attitude. Its a culture and belief that supports the organisation to achieve their goals.
If you would like to sell Enterprise 2.0, believe it, live it and breathe it. When clients see you, they would get it straight away and when they get it, people around them get it and it just keeps on flowing. As a consultant, I get people excited, I educate them, I put them in the right direction and let them run free. I clean up the mess that has been created and I teach people how not to mess it up the next time. This is how you sell Enterprise 2.0.
G'day, Sean here. I am a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers and also a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and my proposed thesis title is "Implementation of Enterprise 2.0 and its Value in Organizations"
This blog is dedicated to topics surrounding Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, and IT strategies for organizations with the aim of increasing efficiency, increasing profits and reducing costs. Hope you enjoy this blog.
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer's and/or University of Melbourne's positions, strategies or opinions. I have not been compensated in any way for the content.
Be the First to Comment 
